Interview with Marta Dahlig

Wow… Marta Dahlig! I never really know where to start with names this big, so can you help me out a little and ease us into the interview with a little information about yourself; how you originally got into the digital painting field and how things have led you to where we find you today?
Oh, please don’t say that! As uncool as it might sound, I am very far from what you might describe as “artistic”. I have an immense talent for making a great mess wherever I go, and sure, it’s a great excuse to blame it on my “artistic soul”, but other than that I am as normal and down to earth as it gets, really!
As for my beginnings, I have been painting since my earliest childhood – art started as simply a way to spend my free time and has gradually become a means of expressing my opinions and emotions.

I was introduced to digital art around seven years ago, at the age of fifteen, by an acquaintancewhose CG manga fan art I adored. I fell in love with the technique instantly! I started painting with a computer using a mouse in Painter 7, and, after a couple of months bought my first cheap
(and very trashy) tablet.

In search of feedback, I started displaying my works on various Internet forums, which helped me to evolve in terms of technique as well as the content of my work.

The evolution of my so-called career as a digital artist came quite suddenly. Actually, I think I was a bit lucky to paint something that became popular so quickly. The first big breakthrough in my artistic life came in 2004 when I released the first of my Seven Deadly Sins series – “Vanity”. The warm, enthusiastic feedback came as a total surprise! Basically, from that point onwards, everything
progressed at a rapid speed – thanks to the “popularity boost”, I got my first corporate projects and have been working commercially non-stop ever since!
I’m sure it has been more than luck that has got you to where you are today; we are all extremely impressed with your talents and can see that you have worked very hard to build up this great repertoire of fantastic artwork – you should be very proud! How long did it take you to get to grips with Painter? Did you ever have those moments where you felt like giving up? If so, how did you get through those and push yourself forwards?
Learning a painting programme basically consists of two stages: learning available tools and options, as well as the actual workflow. I first started working with Procreate’s version of Painter and learned it very quickly, as it was just so intuitive. It took me only a couple of days to learn everything I needed to know in order to work smoothly. The number of brushes was rather small, but they were flexible enough to cover all my needs.

Photoshop, however, was a totally different experience. In general, I would say that I am a “software person” and learn computer programmes quickly, but it took me a long time
to learn PS satisfyingly. Learning about the options and filters only took a while, but using the program for painting felt very uncomfortable at first. The brushes seemed artificial and the lack of the natural blending that’s present in Painter felt very awkward as well.

So indeed, I faced motivation problems like never before! To resolve the issue I dealt with the problem in little steps: I worked mainly in Painter, giving Photoshop a small try from time to time – it took me a couple of months of working on and off like this to be able to paint in PS freely. The process was long and, I daresay, a bit frustrating – but it was sure worth it in the end!
Looking at your portfolio as thumbnails on my monitor, I am pleasantly met with a vast array of stunningly beautiful character illustrations, all of which are highly regarded images in the digital art community! So how do these images generally come about? Can you talk us through the creation of your artworks from concept through to final image?
In general, I would say my working process consists of two stages: planning and actual
painting. The thinking stage is as important as it is painful. I never paint for the sake of depicting something pretty – there has to be at least some edge to a painting or a hidden meaning to keep me interested in it!

I am extremely scientific about the whole process, which might not sound super cool, but I can’t imagine myself painting first and then thinking about what was it that I wanted to convey afterwards. Art, in my understanding, has to be as intellectually appealing as it is visually.

I devote hours to planning my works out. Usually I take something I find aesthetically attractive and push the idea to make it intellectually challenging. I introduce contrasting symbols or storytelling elements that will enrich the piece’s narrative. Of course, more often than not I end up
changing things as I paint, but having a plan for an image ensures that I know what my goal is – what it is exactly that I want to achieve.

Only when I know what to paint and how, can I start the actual painting part. If the chosen subject is especially challenging, I dig for references and research on the topic to understand its historical and cultural contexts.

Quite often I end up planning an image for a longer time than what is required to paint it – I
sometimes spend two weeks on and off thinking about an image, while the actual painting takes
a couple of evenings. For a standard painting, the technical execution usually lasts from 20 to 40 hours spread among a couple of evenings, powered by cups of steaming tea or coffee and obligatory almond chocolate!
It’s really great to learn a little about the thought process that goes into your artwork creation – thanks for sharing all that with us! Have you ever tried to paint something without putting thought to it beforehand, letting your mind and hand roam freely? Or do you find (like me) that a blank canvas can be pretty daunting if you haven’t already decided on what you’re going to do? With this in mind, how do you keep your motivation up and the ideas constantly flowing? Can you work on more than one piece at any time, or do you generally take each as it comes?
To be honest, I feel absolutely lost when I try to paint something without any plan. I can do loose
practice sketches or speedpaintings without any preparation but, as the meaning of a piece is far more important to me than anything else, I would simply not feel comfortable painting a full blown image without having anything to convey.
It is very frustrating at times, since it requires much more pondering and “theory crafting” than spontaneous painting would. To keep my motivation up and my ideas flowing in harder situations, I simply try not to think about painting! Usually, the more I try to force myself to think of something,
the harder and longer the process gets. So I do other things instead; I listen to music, read and generally try to relax my mind. For more “active” remedies, I sometimes write down word associations with a theme of choice to boost creativity or browse art online in search of inspiration.

When it comes to workflows, crossed deadlines quite often require me to work simultaneously on a few images at a time but, whenever possible, I try to work on one painting at a time. Feeling
emotionally involved in most of my pieces requires my full attention in terms of planning
and execution, which makes multi-tasking for various projects quite complicated. For example,
I never work on personal and commercial projects simultaneously, so that I don’t distract my attention for one project with the other – I prefer to carefully plan one image at a time and be sure every painting gets my full commitment.
Viewing your works you can actually feel the emotions of your characters – almost as if the works were photographs of real people captured in life. I’m sure you get told this all the time, but it’s really quite exceptional that you can illustrate a character in such a way that we can feel exactly what he or she is feeling through the strokes of paint applied to your digital canvas. Incredible! So do you have any artist secrets that help you to achieve this depth of emotion in each painting?
I suppose that is where the aforementioned painful planning stage comes in. If an artist knows exactly what they want to depict, it is a natural step to extend their idea onto the facial expression.

It is such a common problem of fantasy art, modern as well as past – you see a beautiful character, an original design, but no emotion at all. Especially nowadays; the search for perfect technique replaces the ambition to actually state something through a painting.

My remedy for this is treating my characters as real people – I underline their personality with
facial features. I love to paint strong women – no weeping princesses or bland fairies, I prefer “my girls” to be provocative and daring (never sexually though). This doesn’t mean I never paint subtle characters though; I just always try to search for something original in a face and make it less sugary-perfect. And so, I tend to paint stronger jaws, bolder eyebrows or bigger noses than the beauty cannon would suggest.
I think it’s great that you’re going for a more real woman – have you ever thought about going to extremes and painting images that show something more “real”, perhaps even verging the grotesque (I’m thinking along the lines of Jenny Saville’s works, now!)? Or do you find that the industry wants to see beautiful painterly women in magazines and books – is this where the money is?
I find Saville’s work absolutely amazing, as she shows the highest level of understanding of the
human form – you have to be a true master to exaggerate proportions or perspective while still staying realistic!

However, to be honest, I have never really considered going in her direction. Not because it is obviously more profitable to draw what is commonly considered beautiful and “easy to digest” intellectually, but because I don’t think I am yet artistically mature enough to dare to experiment so much. Moreover, I think that the focus of our work lies in different places – while Saville makes the essence of her works lie in the human shape, I use characters, combined with other elements, as a means of depicting something else, like creating an allegory or a variously interpretable story.
You tend to use both Painter and Photoshop for your artworks. What does each type of software have over the other that makes it necessary for you to switch between the two? What do you generally use each software for, and how do you know when to switch to the other for a certain part of your painting?
It took me a very long time to actually learn Photoshop – I used to work in Painter for years. If I was to generalise, I find Painter best for highly stylised artworks with looser brushstrokes, while PS is best for extreme photo realism.

The biggest advantage of Painter over PS is the unimaginable ease of blending – there’s no need to play with opacity while eye-dropping colours all the time, all you have to do is select one brush (e.g. Blender) and run over desired areas to smooth colour transitions.

Painter is also great when you want to keep your image looser. The oily brushes are wonderful for hinting details in the background (especially landscapes) – by putting in some rougher blobs you automatically blend the colours together!

What makes me love Photoshop is the ease of creating custom brushes and the unlimited number of possibilities you get by combining different tooltips with various options. You can create a universal round brush with ragged edges for general painting, or tools adjusted for specific texturing jobs, e.g. a linen texturing brush or a skin blending tool. Of course, that is not to say that custom brushes are mandatory to use, but they do make life so much easier!

Learning when to switch between the two came to me naturally, after I worked enough in both of them to compare their ease of usage and effectiveness. Nowadays, I use Photoshop for sketching, early colour blocking and zoom-in detail defining, and Painter for blending stages (especially textiles) as well as all kinds of detail hinting.
So you’re pretty versatile when it comes to painting, being able to switch so easily between the two most popular 2D programmes! Do you work traditionally, too, or are you an exclusively digital girl? We seem to hear increasingly from artists these days that they often use 3D elements in 2D works to get things like perspective correct. Is that something you’ve ever considered or tried? And how about the ZBrush movement that seems to be sweeping the digital communities worldwide – does that have any appeal to you?
I used to work in traditional mediums before I moved onto the computer, working mostly with pencils and watercolour. I have to admit that I moved away from this direction greatly over time – painting digitally is much more comfortable and efficient. The main reason I am digital, however, lies elsewhere. I still remember the frustration of spoiling a pencil image just because I wanted to experiment with it – one change too much could absolutely devastate the final effect and there was no way to take it back! With computers, we have the blessed “undo” and “save as” options, which greatly encourage artists to experiment. Nowadays, I sketch really rarely, mainly when I lack a computer and still feel a need to let myself “run wild”.

As far as mixing 2D and 3D goes, I’ve always admired artists who can do both, and the idea of giving it a try myself seemed very appealing some time ago. It is indeed a great combination, to use one’s painting skills for texturing whilst mixing it with the clean technical side of rendering. I find this “cleanliness” extremely appealing, but at the same time I am not exactly sure whether this mix would fit in with my personality and painting style. My working process (aside from the thinking part) is very chaotic and messy and so I am afraid it might make the creation part a bit too technical and scientific. But as they say: you never know unless you try, so I might still try it out someday!
I can feel that you’re a happy artist who is content with her work, but do you ever have off days where you just wish you could be somewhere else doing something else? If so, where would you go and what would you do to take a break and get away from the world of digital painting?
Well, to be honest, I am more often than not quite far from being happy about my work. I am my biggest critic and usually when I look at my works, all I see are things to improve. It sometimes gets awfully frustrating, as I rather seldom feel truly happy with what I do.

Feeling dissatisfied, however, never really made me want to be somewhere else or do anything else – on the contrary, the bigger problems I see, the harder I try. I try to treat every flaw positively, as an area of potential improvement.

I believe it is the verve and the hard work that helps us evolve as artists. Being exposed to every day critique through the Internet opens our minds towards our art as well as ourselves. The more we understand our weaknesses, the quicker we learn how to overcome them. Whether someone uses this knowledge to their advantage or breaks down is an individual matter, but it is in the toughest times when we should work the hardest.
Those are some very wise words – I think we could all do with some of that mentality from time to time, no matter what field or industry we are working in! Okay, so to round up, can you perhaps tell us a little about what we can expect to see from you in the near future, in terms of projects, publications etc.? And my final question: if you could work on any project, with any artist, what would it be, who with, and why [grins]?
I have spent the past years on intense commercial work and right now I’m slowing down a bit. I still have some illustration projects lined up, including a few books and a movie; however what I am
truly aiming for right now is improvement. For the next few months I would like to experiment with my art a bit and spend some time on anatomy and life painting studies. For the farther future, I have a big dream which I first came up with over two years ago and which I definitely plan to realise one day – releasing a huge tutorial book. I love writing almost as much as I love painting, and combining those passions in one huge creation would be truly fulfilling!

If I was to choose a dream project to work on, it would probably be character designing for a Tim Burton movie. Burton is one of my favourite directors; I have been a great fan for a couple of years, admiring his distinctive style and attitude. His touching plot lines combined with dark humour are extremely appealing to me and being a part of his works would simply be a dream come true. If not Burton, I would like to be a part of a project resembling Disney’s Fantasia. I find music a great inspiration for my art and life in general, and being able to visually interpret it in a huge project would be a wonderful and most challenging experience!
Thanks so much for this fantastic interview, Marta. We wish you the very best of luck with your future aspirations and we can’t wait to see more from you in 2009. Keep up the great work!!

For more work by this artist please visit:
http://www.marta-dahlig.com
Interviewed by: Lynette Clee